Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

Besides this, we cannot undertake pioneer work in a new country, where there has not been the least attempt at sanitary arrangements, without serious risk to life and health. The other missions have already their roll of the dead and the disabled in Upper Burma, and it is considerable in proportion to the number of the workers. The smallpox epidemic, inevitable in a country up to that time without vaccination, attacked two of our number, and one of them was a very serious case, but by God’s preserving mercy they escaped; and typhoid fever, probably the result of an impure water supply, came in its turn, and two others of our little company—one of them the Rev. T. W. Thomas, a new missionary, who had but just arrived—were brought nigh to the gates of death. These, with the ordinary diseases of the country, such as fever and dysentery, befell us, but a merciful Providence brought us all through, and no one has been called away or permanently disabled.

CHAPTER XVIII.
SEEKING THE LOST.

One peculiar and sadly interesting feature of mission work in a new country is the duty of seeking the lost. Whenever a new country is opened, it not only offers a sphere for steady young men seeking one, but it always attracts also many adventurers, wanderers and prodigals from the more settled communities, and they come in considerable numbers. The annexation of Upper Burma was a case of this kind, and the hope of employment brought over persons, some of whom were to be found serving in positions very different from what they or their friends ever expected them to occupy. I remember one day, whilst visiting Kyaukse on mission business, meeting casually a man of this kind. I heard there was an Englishman lying ill in a certain rest-house. I found the man all alone and very ill, suffering apparently from cholera, which was then very prevalent. He was quite deserted and destitute, unable to attend to himself, and in a very neglected condition. The building was the usual Burmese zayat, built of teak, without any furniture whatever, nothing but the man’s mattress and pillow spread on the floor. I sent for the Government apothecary, and in the meantime got him some chicken broth made, for he had no food, sponged him, and made him as comfortable as I could. He told me something of his history. He was an Englishman, and had been brought up respectably, and was a near relation of a minister of the Gospel in England. He was a ne’er-do-weel, and had been in many employments in different parts of the world; at one time at sea in a whaling ship, and at that time driving a locomotive engine, with ballast trains, on the new Mandalay railway, then under construction. His failing, and the cause of all his misery and degradation, was drink. The apothecary gave him medicine, and he recovered, and seemed very grateful to me for the attentions I had shown him. He admitted his faults very candidly, and we had, before I left the next day, a long and serious talk, with prayer. I saw him once afterwards at our service on a Sunday evening in Mandalay, and he seemed altogether brighter and better. Shortly afterwards he left the neighbourhood, stating he wished to break off from his bad companions and start life anew, and I saw him no more.

Another was a very different case. A Brahmin young man was missing from a highly respectable native family in Negapatam. He was a former pupil in our high school there, and had left home in consequence of some dispute with his friends, and was supposed to have come to Mandalay, in search of employment. I did not hear of any lapse of character or misconduct of any kind, but with Brahmins, the mere leaving home and crossing the sea amounts to such a breach of caste, and contamination with others, as to be worse in their eyes than many a deadly sin, and they weep for such a one as over a prodigal. I inquired for him in the public offices where he was likely to be found, but I could find no trace of him.

I received from time to time a number of letters from a young woman belonging to the Eurasian community in Ceylon, asking in great distress for news of her husband, whom she had not seen for seven years. It was a sad story, and the poor woman seemed almost to have lost her senses through grief. Differences had arisen between her husband and his relatives, after the marriage, and he had left home and gone to India, and afterwards to Burma, and had given way to drink. I found traces of him. The missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Rangoon had known him as one of the intemperate characters loafing about the town, whom he had often tried to help, and raise out of the gutter. At last he had suddenly lost sight of him, and could not tell me what had become of him. Through the Superintendent of Police in Rangoon I found what appeared to be the last trace of this unfortunate man. The police records stated that a man, answering to his description, was found drowned one morning, in the lake near Rangoon, and he was supposed to have wandered there, either whilst helpless in liquor, or with the intention of ending his unhappy career. Which it was there was no evidence to show. It was never fully proved that this was the same man, but as he was nowhere to be found, it seemed very probable that it was he, and the poor soul had to content herself, as best she could, with this sad and uncertain information.

A widow of the Eurasian community, whom I had been acquainted with during my residence in Ceylon, years before, wrote to ask if I could hear any tidings of her younger son, who at the time I knew him was a schoolboy, but by that time a young man. He had left home to seek employment, and had learnt the business of a mechanic, but, like too many, had ceased to write to his mother, who, of course, in the absence of any knowledge of him, feared the worst. What a cruel thing to leave a widowed mother in ignorance of his whereabouts! I made all possible inquiries, but with no result. He had not come to Mandalay.

Another very sad case was that of a young Englishman in Mandalay, in Government service, and in a respectable position. Disappointed apparently at not getting promotion as rapidly as he had hoped, late one night he committed suicide by drowning himself. Morally he had drifted far away from the teachings of home and childhood, and he had formally renounced the Christian religion, declared himself a Buddhist, and had even left instructions in his will, that in the event of his death he should be interred as a Buddhist. Though no one appears to have suspected it before the sad event, it was, after his death, the opinion of many who knew him, that his reason must have lost its balance. There was evidence of great deliberation in the carrying out of the deed. His duties in the public service had occupied him until a late hour, and had all been performed in his usual careful manner. He had then dismissed his native attendant and gone on to a large pool of water, and had taken care to make his body sink and ensure his death. I received a letter from his mother in England, written after the sad intelligence reached her, asking for further information, and in great trouble. From this letter it appeared that he had, in his youth, been well and religiously brought up, but long residence abroad had blunted those early impressions. Our countrymen abroad need more than all the attention we can give them, and we often wish we could do more. But the working hours of the day are limited; many duties press upon us, and the Europeans are widely scattered over all the country, and it is impossible to reach them all.

One day I received a letter from a respectable Eurasian gentleman, a Christian man in Calcutta, requesting me to seek his son, a young man of twenty-two. He seemed in great trouble about him, and stated that his son had “rejected a life provision, with every comfort of home and family.” This was not the only trouble in the family. His elder brother, who had been in Burma also, and had prospered in money matters, had fallen a victim to drink, and had died by his own act, having, under the influence of liquor, thrown himself overboard from a steamer, whilst on the way from Rangoon to Calcutta. The father seemed dreadfully crushed at the thought of the unfortunate end of the elder brother, and the prodigal career of the younger, and wrote to ask if I could learn any tidings of him. After some searching, I found him in, I think, the filthiest house I ever stepped inside of, and consorting with some low Burmans. He was working at his trade pretty regularly, and was earning good wages; but he was so hemmed in by his bad habits, and bad companions, and he seemed to be of such an easy, yielding nature, and so infirm of purpose, that it seemed very difficult, if not impossible, to do anything to help him. As I visited him repeatedly, he expressed from time to time a feeble desire to do better; but he admitted to me that the domestic ties he had formed in Mandalay prevented his leaving the place, and quitting the place was the only chance he could see of getting into a better way of life. It was the usual case—a Burmese wife, and yet not a wife.